


Something You Wouldn't Give Anyone Else

by 105NorthTower



Series: Beforehand [6]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, First Meetings, Loss, Love, Miscarriage, New Beginnings, Not Canon Compliant, Pregnancy, Rewrite, Uncredited cameo from Robin Ellacott, You'd never choose not to know, things we do for love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/105NorthTower/pseuds/105NorthTower
Summary: Charlotte:  a rehabilitation of sorts, or, What really happened between Cormoran and Charlotte, or, I enjoy a challenge and would like to like Charlotte more.Contains references to pregnancy and miscarriage.This has pretty quickly left any pretentions of sticking to canon, so I've adjusted the tags.
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Cormoran Strike, Charlotte Campbell Ross/Jago Ross
Series: Beforehand [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168427
Comments: 20
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Charlotte's text:
> 
> I always wanted something particular from you, something you wouldn't give anyone else. 
> 
> Troubled Blood

_A lie would have no sense unless the truth was felt as dangerous. The Cuckoo's Calling_

She'll be home soon. Soon, it'll all be over. Over for good.

I know where everything is, everything that I need to take with me. An entirely humdrum selection, from an ordinary life: clean shirts, spare trousers, underwear, phone charger, stump gel, shaver, toothbrush and toothpaste. No more than will fit easily in a kit bag.

But I can't pack yet. If I pack now, it's been considered, decided in advance, and she can't think that. This has to look good. She has to believe.

The front door is opening. Time for the performance of my life.

***

Ironically, he was trailing a faithless fiancée through Chelsea, when he saw her. 

She came out of Bluebird thirty feet away, wearing a crimson dress that brushed the ground, and as she moved, revealed a long leg to the thigh, then concealed it, then exposed the other, and hid it away, and repeated the pattern. Her actions always had a sinuous quality, the dress didn't give her that, but it made it impossible to overlook or ignore. 

He barely had time to absorb the dress, to release the breath caught in his throat, before a familiar figure emerged behind her and his world collapsed, just as surely as if he'd been one of his own hapless clients. 

***

"Bluey?"

"Hmmm."

"Are you awake?"

"Give me your hand and I'll show you."

"Mmmm. Well, that's no proof. Corpses sometimes have those."

"Corpses don't do this ..."

"Oh ... yes ... Bluey ... I love you ..."

Later she stretched out, naked, like a cat, and made her confession while he stroked her back.

"Bluey, I'm pregnant."

"You're ... really? Oh my god."

"You're happy?"

"Yes, Charlotte ... I never thought ... Yes, I'm happy. Are you?"

"I don't know yet."

"Very Charlottian. Well, I can be happy for both of us, for now."


	2. Chapter 2

_'You're in the wrong fucking room, Char, darling,' Ross had said, staking out his rights by the caressing arrogance of his tone. The Cuckoo's Calling_

I cannot bear to hear the sound of the words in my own mouth. Harsh, accusatory, unyielding.

I must know the date she has her first scan. If I can't, I must be told when she took the test. If that's not possible, I must speculate as to what dates we had intercourse and when conception occurred.

I must strip this event of every human feeling and render it to a mere collection of evidence.

***

It took him a few days to clear the books. The Agency wasn't profitable, not yet. It was loaded with too much debt and wasn't likely to make money until the next financial year, at the earliest. It had a steady trickle of clients, and word of mouth was bringing more in.

Doing surveillance that didn't pay was going to hit the business hard. There would be zero cash flow. Debt repayments would have to stop for while. He knew Gillespie would be down on him like a tonne of bricks.

But there were things he had to know, and this was the only way to find out.

He placed the last manilla file in the rusty filing cabinet, and set out to acquire the movements of The Honourable Jago Ross.

***

"Lottie?"

"Don't call me that."

"I thought it was more ... mumsy. Might be your future name."

"I don't want to be mumsy, now or at any point in the future."

"OK. But you are going to be a mother. I know the aristocracy doesn't go in for big emotions, but shouldn't we acknowledge it, in some small way?"

"I'll knit something."

"Yeah? Can I watch?"

"No, Bluey, I was joking. Can you really see me with a knitting needle?"

"If the occasion demanded it. Perhaps for a high society murder. He cannot break her spirit despite everything, she backs away from his cruel hands, into the snug quarters where Nanny sleeps, grabbing the first sharp implement that comes to hand, she drops all 192 stitches and plunges the knitting needle into his heart. Knit one, purl one, stab one, cast off ..."

"If the Agency fails, you can be the next Owen Quine."

"Next Michael Fancourt, please!"

"He's sexy. A total shit by all accounts, but sexy."

"I'm sexy.'

"Are you? Really? I think you should put that book down and show me."


	3. Chapter 3

_Don't kid a kidder. Lethal White_

She's outraged at my presumption. Her responses take on a high-handed tone. She won't be questioned, but I persist.

I demand answers. I won't back down, I won't placate, or comfort, I won't tell her the truth.

(Because the truth is that I don't mind, I don't need to know, she's so much part of me that I just don't fucking care about the how or the who or the why. Even if all of our transgressions were laid bare it wouldn't touch us. Just as if the oceans disappeared and revealed the sea floor, the earth would not change its essential shape.

She is Charlotte Campbell and she is superb. I don't tell her that, but everything else is just decoration.)

She's hurt, but she fights back, all the more dangerous for being wounded. 

***

The first week of watching Jago reveals he has a tendency to long, sober luncheons but makes up for this by early starts and extended visits to the gym.

The second shows he doesn't put off meetings with his accountant and his lawyer. He receives no unexplained visitors. He doesn't have a dealer or a second mistress or a wife. He has a counsellor, and keeps his appointments.

In week three his children arrive with a sexagenarian nanny. A round-faced boy with a mop of blonde hair, and a girl with a long, tapering plait reaching the hem of her school blazer. He resembles nothing but an engaged and devoted father.

He saw no-one alone except her. 

On the last day of the third week Strike drank a bottle of Arran, and closed his file.

***

"Charlotte? What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing. Come here."

"Bluey, I don't want to ..."

"Neither do I."

"You're a liar."

"I actually have a headache."

"That's why you're watching the football at full volume."

"Well, you know, it's coming on slowly."

"You're a bad liar."

"Tell me why you're crying."

"Would you believe ... hormones?"

"Maybe. Did I ever tell you about Richard Anstis and his oestrogen overdose?"

"I think I'd have remembered."

"Goes on holiday and takes a whole month of Helly's birth control by mistake. Sobbed all the way through Pearl Harbour dubbed into Portuguese."

"You're making that up."

"Not. He prefers a Venus to a Wilkinson Sword to this very day, especially when he's doing his legs."

"Stop it."

"That's better."

"Mmmm. You always make it better, Bluey."


	4. Chapter 4

_The lies she told were woven into the fabric of her being, her life; so that to live with her and love her was to become slowly emeshed by them, to wrestle her for the truth, to struggle to maintain a foothold on reality. The Cuckoo's Calling_.

I allow her rage to fill the room. After all she's done. After defying her family. After the hours spent in hospital rooms. After supporting me and caring for me and giving me a place to live.

After all this, I dare to doubt her? _Don't you dare fucking investigate me._

But I am stone, and cannot be worked upon.

Her anger swirls around us and can't escape. Our fights always end the same way, with her leaving, but this one can't. She won't end it, because she doesn't want me to think about who will replace me. She won't run out, because she doesn't want me to wonder where she will go.

***

On Monday of the fourth week, he lets himself be seen, standing in the street, as Ross leaves his City office. They sit in the back of his car, a tactfully deaf chauffeur in the front.

He explains he's aware of what's happening, and he's not searching for dirt, at least, not in the way Ross thinks. He's reading the room, trying to decide.

He calls on all his skills and gets Ross talking. About the lost years. About his children arriving, being taken away, and slowly gaining a foothold in their lives again. About alcohol and the love of it that never truly goes away and the devastation it wreaks on a man's health. About Charlotte Campbell, the way they've circled each other until now, and the future. 

By the time they part, he knows two things. He also knows these things are incompatible with each other.

***

"Bluey, let's go somewhere."

"Where would you like to go?"

"Just ... away "

"Away from what?"

"Everything and everyone. We'll get a room and stay in bed for a whole weekend."

"Sounds good to me. But ..."

"What?"

"What if we don't want to come back?'

"Of course we won't want to come back. So maybe we never will."

"Who'll miss us?"

"No-one who matters."

"When will we leave?"

"Now "

"Ah ..."

"Hmmm?"

"Work tomorrow. That case ..."

"Screw the case, Bluey! This is a seduction and it takes priority!"

"How about ... we don't leave ..."

"You've lost me."

"... but we pretend we have left?"

"Go on ..."

"We're there already. We can't use our phones in case they trace us. There's no television or even a radio in our room. Even the Gideon's Bible has been stolen by desperate bible thieves. There's nothing to do but ... be bored. Over and over again."

"Is there a mini bar?"

"Of course."

"Didn't the desperate bible thieves take it?"

"Do you know what the Bible says about theft?"

"I'm in. But only ..."

"Only?"

"... if we also pretend this is our last time together, before we lose each other for good. Because ... circumstances. So we need to make every bedspring and tiny bottle of whisky count."

"We will, Charlotte. We always do."


	5. Chapter 5

_You'd never choose not to know. Troubled Blood_

She can't leave, so I must go, she must make me go. I know it's coming but I don't know exactly how she's going to do it, until it happens. 

No-one better than Charlotte at pulling the house down, around her own head. After all, there is no baby. She lost it. So there's nothing to keep me here, is there?

A person who hadn't spent 16 years watching her lie might have believed it.

***

People. Places. Things.

If he considered these in connection with Charlotte Campbell, Cormoran Strike and Jago Ross, there was an odd man out. A jarring note. One of these things is not like the others.

It didn't take a detective to spot it.

***

"Did you want something?'

"Yeah.What do you reckon is the best way to get this out?'

"Ha! I'd get the maid to do it."

"I'm Cormoran. You're stunning."

"I'm Charlotte. Well, sit yourself down and tell me something about yourself, Cormoran."

"I'm bored of Oxford. Can't wait to leave.'

'All the best people are bored here, sweetie. What'll you do when you go?"

"Army."

"Oh! I wouldn't have guessed that! No, on second thoughts I can see you as a soldier. The 8th Armoured Beer and Snacks Regiment."

'Special Investigation Branch. I want to investigate."

"Why? What don't you already know?"

"I just ... like finding out the truth."

"But lies are so much more revealing."

"So ... there's no point in me saying, 'Tell me something about yourself, Charlotte' then?"

"There's every point. I'll tell you something, and you can tell me if it's a lie."

"It's a lie."

"I haven't told you what it is, yet!"

"Just a hunch."

"You are good! How long have you wanted to investigate, Cormoran?"

"As long as I can remember. I ... um."

"What?"

"Never mind.'

"No ... you were about to say something real. Come on, Cormoran, don't lose your nerve now."

"I get a feeling. In my gut.'

'That's the curry, surely."

"A burning. Like I haven't eaten for days. You know that feeling? You're completely empty, your gut acid is eating you away, you're turning blue at the extremities."

"Yes, I've done all the diets. Turning blue, hmm?"

"It's a consuming thing. It doesn't go away until I know. I always need to know."

"Well, Bluey, what three things would you like to know about me, this evening? And I promise you the truth. Because I like you."

"Why you're here alone. What are you doing tomorrow. What noises you make in bed.'

"You can only know one of those things, lover. But ... I will let you choose which one."


	6. Postscript

_... in and out of every dream, gorgeous, vituperative and haunted ... The Cuckoo's Calling_

I'm woken by you battering on the glass.

"Wake up! WAKE UP, BLUEY!"

I consider ignoring you but there's a good chance you'll shatter the glass and I can't afford to replace it. These last four weeks have reduced me to ruin, in more ways than you imagine. I unlock the door and retreat back to the inner office.

"Bluey ..."

I haven't got much left after last night. 

"Can't we talk about it?"

"There's nothing to say, is there?"

"You didn't give me a chance, you just walked out."

"It's over, Charlotte." _It has to be. This is habit and comfort and fear. Your red dress life is somewhere else. With him. The at-long-last Honourable Jago._

"You told me once you were built for stamina, remember?"

 _I do remember_.

"... and you always wanted to know."

I scrape myself together for one last lie.

"Not any more, Charlotte."

You reach out to cup my face with your hands, and I pull away rather than risk your touch being my undoing. You lose your cool and scrape your fingernails down my cheek instead. Your hair falls around your crumpling face, and you run.

"You'll be back, Bluey."

Like a fool I start after you. I want to bury myself in you and confess. I know about Jago, and I don't care. I know you're pregnant (you still are), and you lied about how much to keep your options open; I'm fine with it. I know it's mine and can't be his. Come back to me because I know. I know. _I know._

I reach the top of the stairs and slam into a slight figure in a trenchcoat. I don't know who they are and I don't care, but they stop me for long enough.

It's the last thing I can give you, Charlotte. I will pretend not to know and not to want to know. Only this time. Only for you.

THE END


End file.
